Court Opinions

Welcome back! If you missed them over the holiday week, you will want to check out our series on 2016’s Pay Period Leap Year from last week. You might need to take some immediate action to get payroll ready for this ...

Last week, a federal judge in the Northern District of Illinois ruled against a group of Chicago police officers who claimed that the department had unwritten rules that discouraged them from turning in overtime for off-duty work performed on their BlackBerrys. ...

We have roughly two and a half weeks left in 2015, so I can’t officially call this decision the most obvious FLSA decision of 2015 yet, but I can be pretty certain that it would be hard to top this decision ...

On Tuesday, I watched the webcast of Rodriguez v. Raymours Furniture before the New Jersey Supreme Court where the court considered whether an employer can use a contract (here, in an employment application) to shorten the statute of limitations period otherwise ...

Many employers take their employee handbooks and policies for granted, or at least let them collect dust. Written correctly, a handbook will clearly and succinctly outline your expectations and your key policies. It’s a vital communication tool and can help ...

UPDATE: Amendment 783 was cut out of the final bill in conference. As you may have heard, the House has passed a 6-year, $325 billion transportation bill, after considering over 130 amendments. What you may not know is that the bill ...

Recently, we have discussed certain types of special calculations for non-exempt employees who earn commissions or who receive commissions or bonuses at a later date than they earned them. These issues are all part of broader discussions about fixed payments that ...

Recently, the federal district court in Minnesota allowed a collective action filed by call center employees to proceed in an example of how employers can end up playing with fire through over-aggressive time deductions, particularly when employees are idle and “engaged ...

Recently, the DOL’s preferred test for whether employers must pay their interns has been under attack, an issue I’ll address more directly in a future post. Put simply, the scope of lawful unpaid internships has narrowed substantially in recent years, ...

Every now and again, I have to bring your attention to decisions plaguing businesses in wage and hour and immigration in this country, as I did last month with the lack of a “dependent contractor” classification under the FLSA. Not ...